Kingsfisher Bar at Burgh Castle near Yarmouth

We had a false start on the Friday as the band set off to play the gig only to find that it had been shifted to Saturday! Mick had arrived first and was able to contact Nige and myself who were in transit. Carl was accompanying me and, after Mick’s call, we turned back and ended up in the “Moreton Hall” pub in Bury for a coupla beers. On the Saturday I set out again and arrived at 6:45 to find Nige and Mick unloaded and setting up. It was cold and windy so I parked up near the main door to unload and re-parked behind Mick’s van when I finished. The stage is a lot smaller than I remembered, until Mick reminded me that the bands spread out onto the dance floor at the “Heros” do. I managed to squeeze my Bose in the back, but a lot of the sound would run into a piano on my side or the false ceiling over the stage. Mick had procured an A / B switch to switch the headset mic off and the lead lengths made it sensible to route to my Bose. It turned out there were a couple of birthday parties on and the venue was filling up nicely. The guvnor Paul was content to put his own musak on with Heart Radio on at first followed after half an hour by a selection of soul type dance CD tracks. Mick had agreed two one hour sets starting at 9pm and suggested a more casual look of black shirt without tie, but still wear the white waistcoats. We opened up to a full room with “Flingel Bunt”. There was no reaction whatsoever? So we did the band introductions anyway and set about playing the first few numbers. The sound was OK where I was. Mick and my vocals were kinda right in my ear but I hoped the audience were getting a more rounded balance. As we played on we did start to get a little applause. Thinking we needed to try something different I called for Ace’s “How Long”. We played it pretty well and it got a slightly better round of applause. So, thinking modern, next up was “How Long” by the Eagles. For reasons unknown the power went off just as we were announcing it. Nige went off to get the guvnor to reset their power and I had a look at our trip box which had tripped? When we finally got going again I made a few mistakes on guitar and I think the band performance was a bit hurried; so I wasn’t surprised at some more muted audience response. As we ventured into our normal set 2 material I continued to be slightly dismayed at the limited responses we got from normal crowd pleasers such as “Wonder of You / Sweet Caroline” Not much applause and no dancing? Mind you, no one was leaving and they all looked like they were enjoying themselves so we kept on playing until we closed the set with “Words”. In the interval, the barkeep said he couldn’t hear my announcements. In many situations that can be a good thing because it means he can hear the bar orders; but I took it to mean ‘speak up’. Well I had been quite soft spoken because the Bose was so much in my ear at this gig, so I resolved to announce louder when we returned. Also had a word with Stevie Styles from the UK Beach Boys who was interested in the Bose. His take on it was punchy, but a bit too dry – he would use more reverb. A difficult circle of opinion in our band to square! We returned to open the second set with a slightly nervy performance of “Sky High”; but it did get a good response (led by Stevie Styles!) I was toying with the idea of calling some of the new numbers we had recently tried out, but in the end I chickened out and we settled for the “Searchers” and “How Sweet”. We had a bit of dance interest as we carried on with a good performance of “Runaround Sue” and then we rapidly filled the floor as we kept things going by playing on without gaps through a long dancey sequence including: “Moon of Love, Dance the Night Away, Walk of Life, Crazy Little Thing, Hi Ho, All Right Now, Lets Dance and Mony Mony”. We popped “Unchained” in at this point as a slowey and that filled the floor with romantics. The gig was finally becoming rewarding but we were heading towards close time! We resumed with “Amarillo Hey Baby” which kept the floor full enough then we did “Walk Alone” followed by “Johnny B Goode” to close. There was a good reaction and even some half hearted shouts for more but we were already in retreat to get changed, so the encore never got played. By the time we packed and loaded up the bar had emptied a bit, but there were still quite a few having a drink, so I thought the guvnor must have been pleased. I negotiated a tricky exit through the bollards at the front of the club and set off on an hour and 20 minute run home, getting in about 1:30am on another cold night. We have a weekend off now and I hope I can get over the residue of the phlegmy virus that has been dogging me the last few days.